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Published on: March 9, 2017
Stable and tunable phosphorescent neutral cyclometalated Au(III) diaryl complexes
Jai Anand Garg1, Olivier Blacque, Thomas Fox
1Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Zürich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zürich, Switzerland.
Novel luminescent gold(III) complexes featuring cyclometalated ligands were synthesized. These complexes exhibit long-lived emission at room temperature, tunable by altering the ligands, suggesting potential applications in luminescence.
Area of Science:
- Coordination Chemistry
- Organometallic Chemistry
- Photophysics
Background:
- Cyclometalated gold(III) complexes are of interest due to their unique photophysical properties.
- Tuning ligand environments is crucial for controlling luminescence in metal complexes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To synthesize and characterize novel luminescent cyclometalated gold(III) complexes.
- To investigate the emission properties and excited state characteristics of these complexes.
- To explore the influence of ligand variation on luminescence.
Main Methods:
- Synthesis of cis-[(N^C)AuL] and cis-[(N^C)AuL2] type complexes.
- X-ray crystallography for structural determination.
- Photoluminescence spectroscopy to study emission properties.
- Density Functional Theory (DFT) and Time-Dependent DFT (TD-DFT) calculations for stability and excited state analysis.
Main Results:
- Successful synthesis of eight novel luminescent gold(III) complexes.
- X-ray structures determined for most complexes, confirming their molecular architecture.
- Observation of long-lived emission in solution at room temperature.
- Emission primarily attributed to triplet states with intraligand (IL) character, influenced by the metal center.
- DFT and TD-DFT calculations supported complex stability and elucidated excited state nature.
Conclusions:
- The synthesized gold(III) complexes display promising luminescence properties.
- Ligand modification provides an effective strategy for tuning the emissive states.
- These findings contribute to the understanding of photophysics in cyclometalated gold complexes and their potential applications.
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